Performing legitimacy: interactional authority in Arpitan language activism

This article examines how language activists use interaction itself as a site of political action. While research on minority languages has often focused on large-scale processes or treated interviews as monologic accounts, this study approaches activism through the micro-dynamics of talk. Drawing on two interviews with Arpitan activists in Italy’s Aosta Valley, I show that such encounters are not simply moments of narration but arenas in which activists perform and negotiate their legitimacy. Through strategies such as provocative openings and closings, control of topics and turn-taking, code-switching across three languages, and selective withdrawal from speech events, activists work to impose a particular vision of reality, one in which “Arpitania” exists as a socio-political entity. By linking these interactional practices to broader struggles over linguistic authority, the article argues for an interactionist approach to language activism that bridges micro-level performance and macro-political dynamics.